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That said, they were nightmares. Very cute nightmares who loved ponies, the color mauve, and Wolf Blitzer’s facial hair. They were like the velociraptors fromJurassic Park, constantly sniping and growling and biting at each other, but then teaming up to execute a series of flawless kills. Their kills, in this simile, were things like getting me to promise they could take riding lessons next year, convincing me to say the word “fart” so they could laugh hysterically, and reminding me that Grandma gave them a picture of me as a child racing down the street in myDuck Talesunderwear, and now I would never be able to run for Congress.
“Howdy there!” I called as they flew into my arms. I hugged them fiercely, then opened the rear door to usher them in. They’d made clay handprint ornaments and were all kinds of excited to show me. Then Em grabbed Ada’s to illustrate a minor difference in their artistic visions and accidentally broke it, and you would think General Patton had just learned he’d lost Fort Driant.
“You know, we can fix that with some Krazy Glue when we get home,” I said above the shouting. “But first, we’re gonna swing by and visit Grandma.”
Silence.
Then a rousing chorus of “Grandma!” I made a mental note to try to sound even fractionally as excited to see my mother as they were.
“Yes, Grandma!” I agreed heartily.
I loved my mother. And she loved to judge me. But she also loved me as a person. Most of the time. When I was dating Ben, she met him and said,“He’ll definitely be a moneymaker,”which I had taken as a compliment on Ben’s behalf. The second time we had dinner with her, she got me alone in the kitchen then made an ‘ugh’ noise and nodded out toward the dining room and said,“He’s just like your father.”
Which was mean, if you knew my father. Creepy, if you were someone who didn’t want to draw comparisons between your father and the guy you fucked. And a complete non-sequitur, because we had just been talking about the French Open.
The girls and I arrived at Mom’s house, which had stood strong against the winds of change since the mid-eighties. Blue vinyl siding, black shutters, and a screen door that always stuck when I opened it and was too much trouble to figure out how to close. Meaning that later when I opened the main door, Mom’s Yorkie, Pebbles, would immediately race outside. Then Mom would scream, Pebbles would pee on the yew bushes, I would apologize, and Pebbles would race back inside—so I really didn’t see what the big deal was about her getting out. The house’s interior was all tile countertops, laminate white cabinets with wood trim, carpet straight out of a Radisson Inn, and so many ceramic figures of rosy-cheeked peasants. So many.
I opened the screen and left it stuck there, pushed open the door, and tried fruitlessly to stop Pebbles with my foot. The girls barreled past me inside, which did succeed in knocking Pebbles back long enough for me to close the door. The dog was wearing a red velvet hair bow with a jingle bell in it, and the bell tinkled as she swarmed our ankles. Enthusiastic greetings were exchanged between the girls and Pebbles, then the girls and Grandma, and then my mother gave me a hug and asked why my coat smelled like a basement, and we all went to the living room.
There was a plate of gingerbread cookies on the coffee table. I watched Pebbles snatch one and take it behind the couch. I wondered how many cookies were originally on the plate, and how many of the ones that remained were coated in dog saliva. I snagged one anyway, getting crumbs on the floor as I struggled out of my coat.
The girls retrieved some toys from the basket Mom kept behind the TV and began a game in which several plastic horses had to go to school with a stuffed squirrel and a dinosaur. I sat on the ragged damask couch that smelled way more like a basement than my coat. Mom took the armchair next to a shelf full of kissing, pipe-playing peasants, and we proceeded not to speak to each other for a solid minute. I had a great view of the Christmas tree, which was immaculately decorated and already had wrapped presents underneath it.
“Did you add more tinsel?” I asked.
“Oh, a week or so ago.” Mom was a petite woman with short, frosted blond hair, glasses she wore on a chain and almost never on her eyes, and the sort of wholesome Midwest accent you heard in radio ads for local appliance stores. She wore an estate sale’s worth of jewelry on each arm, and her bangles clinked as she gestured at the tree. “Jake put the angel on top. He’s so tall.”
“He sure is.” I bit into the cookie, which was rock hard.
Em asked if she and Ada could please go to the back room so they wouldn’t be distracted by our voices. I granted permission around the cement crumbling between my teeth, and Horse School moved down the hall.
I held onto my headless gingerbread man and searched for a topic of conversation. “How’s your dance class?”
Mom looked at me, surprised. “How do you know about that?”
“Was it a secret?”
“No.”
“I heard through the grapevine.”
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Yes, Linda and I are learning tap dance. It’s fun.”
“Good.”
We lapsed into silence again.
“Google, turn on the tree,” Mom said after a while. The tree’s golden lights blinked on. “There’s a recital on the twenty-third. If you want to come.”
“I…do.”
“You do not.”
“I do! Mom, of course I do.”
“Oh.” It bothered me that she looked so genuinely taken aback. “Well, that would be very nice. I’ll probably get nervous now. Forget my steps.”
“You won’t.”
